A Poet's Blog: Roger N.Taber shares his thoughts & poems...

Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian and poet-novelist.- "Ethnicity, Religion, Gender, Sexuality ... these are but parts of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to critical emails about my poetry. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

Name:
Location: London, United Kingdom

Sadly, a bad fall in 2012 has left me with a mobility problem, and being diagnosed with prostate cancer the same year hasn't helped, but I get out and about with my trusty walking stick as much as I can, take each day as it comes and try to keep looking on the bright(er) side of life. Many of my poems reflect the need to nurture a positive-thinking mindset whatever life throws at us.

Thursday 27 June 2013

Doors OR T-I-M-E, Exits and Entrances


[Update March 14 2018] In the death of Professor Stephen Hawking announced today, the world has just lost a great and truly inspiring man.]

Now, although I have every confidence in the hospital team treating me for the prostate cancer with hormone therapy, I have days when I could feel myself slipping into a depression about it all. Having taught myself to recognise and acknowledge the signs, I knew I had to act or free fall into the abyss. [The abyss and I are old adversaries, but I like to think I can get the upper hand now so long as I don’t let myself go into denial.]

From time to time, I have a really BAD day and (with some difficulty I have to say) need to think myself into philosophical mode; from there, it is only a few metaphorical steps into positive thinking mode, and from there but a hop, skip and a jump into writing mode. Today’s poem is the result of a form of self-help therapy much practised by yours truly.

What is ‘now’? It is always ‘now’. Now is eternal, like time and space. We are ‘Now’. We are from ‘Now’. We are heading for ‘Now’.

What, I wonder, what will our ‘Now’ be like once we arrive at journey’s end, shaped by the choices we have made or left unmade? Whatever, we can but try to arrive at a ‘Now’ that offers a better, kinder existence than its history has shown us (or it) far.

DOORS or T-I-M-E, EXITS AND ENTRANCES

Whenever asked where I come from,
I answer, my mother’s womb,
yet a sense, too, of being somewhere
distant, unknown, as if crossing
mythical territories of time and space
just to get there

When asked about my goals in life,
(prompted by what motivation?)
I have confess I’ve never been sure
which doors are left ajar for us
just to take a peep, our choice, whether
or not we enter.

Some people have made accusations
against me, suggesting I’m sitting
on some rickety, metaphorical fence
rather than face what I might find
should I jump off, explore the potential
for mind and spirit

Stung by the rebuke, I flung them open,
these doors left ajar to tease me,
daring me try translating hieroglyphics
lining mother’s womb, luring me
into a vast maze of corridors whose dust
will host my tomb

I've asked of my self where I come from
and it answered, my mother’s womb,
invoking, too, a sense of having been
somewhere (very) distant, unknown,
crossing vast territories of time and space
just to get here

Now when asked about goals in life,
(prompted by what motivation?)
I have to confess I’ve rarely been able
to decide between doors left ajar 
just for the peeping and others intending
I should enter

On womb, tomb, and in-between doors,
find hieroglyphics writing up 
a (much ghosted) autobiography of life
and death, often taken for graffiti 
on this ‘n’ that door slamming on us
if (never) quite shut

Copyright R. N. Taber 2013


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Monday 24 June 2013

Unfinished Symphony


Strange, isn't it, how one recalls the oddest things about school days...?  I was listening to a bird singing its heart out on our classroom window sill and missed a question put to me by my English Teacher. Without thinking, I confessed the reason, adding for good measure that it sounded as if it was trying to tell us something. (I was known to be something of a dreamer even in those days and had written poems for the school magazine for which I was often mocked although never nastily). 

The rest of the class burst out laughing. 

My ears burned on receipt of some good-natured jeering. Expecting a reprimand, I was surprised (and not a little relieved) when the teacher commented, 'Nature is always trying to tell us something, Taber. The trouble is, only the likes of painters and poets can ever be bothered to listen. Now, where was I...?" whereupon he proceeded with the lesson without my ever knowing what his question had been. Such is life, I guess, where time - up to a point - is customised, and rarely (if ever) finished with us until we are finished with it.

This poem is a villanelle.

UNFINISHED SYMPHONY

Music of the Earth
invoking its biography,
at birth and rebirth

Come sorrow, mirth,
(womb-tomb of history)
Music of the Earth

Playing up to a dearth
of uncommon humanity
at birth and rebirth

Testament to its worth;
(crescendo, an epiphany)
Music of the Earth

At humankind's hearth,
an unfinished symphony
at birth and rebirth

Nature, eternal wreath
celebrating Man's integrity;
Music of the Earth
at birth and rebirth

Copyright R N. Taber 2009; 2018

[Note: I only recently revised this poem, and I dare say those readers who had already taken me to task for indulging in so-called 'poetic license' regarding its rhyming scheme will be disappointed, but that's poets for you, we cheat sometimes...]

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Friday 21 June 2013

H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, Time's Footprints


Sometimes, we can be walking along without a care in the world, and then we spot something, as often as not quite trivial, that triggers a chain reaction taking us to places we would have much preferred to avoid…and once there, struggle to find our way back again.

It is true to say that time's footprints are sometimes those of hobnail boots, all but obliterating any prints that have gone before although, as an open heart is to bigotry, so humanity is to inhumanity, and all the more capable of regeneration. 

H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, TIME'S FOOTPRINTS

Scraps of a letter floating down a gutter,
pricking the occasional comfort zone

Wondering about blue ink stains, inwardly
debating the when, whose, and why

Doesn’t matter, of course, all history now,
heading in pieces for the nearest drain

Yet, someone had once made time to write,
feel, read (send?) decide to throw away

Secrets passing between lovers found out,
and punished, disowned…ever forgiven?

Friends, family, stranded on opposite sides
of some socio-cultural-religious divide?

Had someone discovered, betrayed, turned
finer feelings into anonymous ink stains?

Tearful, over scraps of a letter, potentially
sucking the life out of any one of us

Bad memories eagerly mowed down by rolls
of thunder, over anxious to leave no trace

Rain! Gutter, a river, scraps gone to sewage
under a city that stinks of rotten secrets

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in Accomplices To Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007]


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Saturday 8 June 2013

Dawn Prelude


They say we dream the more intensely just before we wake up.

Many if not most people love to dream of waking in a loved one’s arms.

Some such dreams do come true, of course, but not for everyone. and not without our having to first 'get real' by fighting off off any self-consciousness, getting out there to try and meet that special someone instead of sitting back and waiting for him or her to simply come our way. In the meantime, we get to meet some interesting people, make some good friends, broaden our horizons and generally acquire a social identity more likely to make us an altogether more interesting person to know, maybe even to love…

Positive thinking can defeat even the worst nightmares, especially when it becomes a habit likely to surface from even murkiest depths of the human subconscious.

Me, I only discovered the passionate side of love but once, in someone who was killed in a road accident abroad not long after we had found each other, but such is life sometimes, and it was well  worth every heartbeat just to have been in love and have it reciprocated even for a short time. Love, of course, is a many-sided creature, and we need to remember that; love for family, friends, pets and places too, all have their place in the heart that remains open to them even after certain doors slam shut.

DAWN PRELUDE

Seconds before dawn,
taste and smell of silence
invading the senses,
listening out for love, 
Poetry of Life, inspiring
dreamers worldwide

Seconds before dawn,
laughing among old gods
before responding
to their wake-up call,
reflecting on getting real 
with our dreams

Seconds before dawn
gets to strike its first blow
to send us reeling
from those home truths 
alerted to a centuries-old
war on dreams

Seconds before dawn
trust fear to give the heart
cause to miss a beat,
allow breathing space
to reassert its disputed role
as a lead player

Seconds before dawn,
we rediscover in ourselves
whatever raison d’être
asks we but keep in view,
if only to see us on our way
into another day

Seconds before dawn,
caressed by its shadows,
seduced by its charms,
comes you-me-us, where
hope springs eternal, the stuff
of all our dreams

Copyright R. N. Taber 2007, 2018

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in Accomplices to Illusion by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2007.]




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Monday 3 June 2013

Through a Glass Darkly

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

An earlier version of this poem as first published in the anthology An Immortal Truth, Poetry Now [Forward Press] 2000 and subsequently in my first collection the following year.

The original version was written in 1984 following a discussion with several peers about how awful we were sometimes when we were children and how, whenever we look in memory’s mirror for those halcyon days, maturity invariably summons certain regrets that, in turn, cause cracks to appear...


To see “through a glass” (mirror) darkly” is to have an obscure or imperfect vision of reality. The expression is often presumed to have come from the writings of Paul, the Apostle who suggests that while we may not see clearly in the Here-and-Now, we will do so at the end of time. 

Alternatively: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." Corinthians Chap 13 verse 12 (I know my Bible, it is a good read, even though I had rejected religion for nature by the age of 11 years.)

Whatever, many if not most children, may well know right from wrong, but lack the experience maturity brings to imagine the broader consequences of either. Ahm yes, but how many of us have the imagination to ever really understand the wider consequences of our actions ...? 

There is a lot to be said for the old adages, two that instantly spring to mind are 'Look before you leap.' and 'A little thought goes a long way.'

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY 

In a pretty side street, tree lined,
its children playing hide-and-seek
make plenty din enough
to wake the dead, the old man says
who lives on the ground floor
of an end house whose shiny steps
such fun we slip, towering wall
a thrill to squeal and climb, knowing
yell and fuss, but by the time he’ll rush,
no sign of us

Waving a stick, he’ll bawl us out
and we’ll mouth him back, but not until
the door slams shut. Oh, but kids
at play make no excuses, just din enough
to wake the dead, the old man says,
treading the ground floor of the end house
whose mossy steps so snug we sprawl,
graffiti wall a joy to lean, grubby curtains
a-quiver at our kissing or could it be for all
he’s missing...?

Children gone, traffic enough
to wake the dead, the old man said
who lived that shabby room
whose crabby gloom we never spared;
brave wall, a sorry spread,
no curtains (windows boarded up instead)
ghosts playing hide-and-seek
with eternity facing a bleak affinity
for wings circling the last tree left standing,
cracks in a mirror appearing

 Uncomfortable truths, a cruelty enduring

Copyright R. N. Taber 2000; 2011


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